As used herein in connection with the present invention, the term textile packages is intended to encompass and is to be understood to include any package of textile yarn, strand or other textile material wound, contained or otherwise collected in a packaged form such as, without limitation, spinning pots, cheeses, speed frame bobbins, cops, canned sliver, or the like.
Transport apparatus and devices for yarn cheeses, for example, have been known for a long time in connection with textile machines producing cheeses, such as open-end rotor spinning machines or winding machines which produce cheese packages from yarn bobbins. These textile machines either have two conveyor belts disposed in a central disposition such as in the case of open-end rotor spinning machines or are equipped with a bobbin transport belt disposed in an off center disposition such as in the case of cheese winding machines.
The cheeses produced on the winding installations of such textile machines are customarily transferred to the transport apparatus or devices running the length of the machine by automatically operating service units, which may be so-called cheese changers in the case of bobbin winding machines or possibly piecing carriages with changing devices in the case of open-end spinning machines, and the cheeses are conveyed by the transport apparatus or devices to a bobbin removal apparatus disposed at the end of the machine. These bobbin removal apparatus, for example palletizing devices or the like, transfer the cheeses to bobbin transport carriages or other downstream-located transport devices.
In a cheese transfer from the winding devices of the individual work stations of a winding machine to the transport device or apparatus running the machine length, such as represented for example in European Patent Publication EP 0 325 991 B1, it must be assured that the cheese to be transferred does not collide with cheeses which are already being transported on the conveyor belt of the transport apparatus or devices. Thus, in the course of the cheese transfer by means of the cheese changer or the piecing carriage, it must be assured that at the time of the transfer of a cheese the space on the conveyor belt located behind the respective winding device is unoccupied.
Various belt clearing strategies are known to prevent the collision of cheeses during this transfer. For example, it can be provided to first successively load a stopped conveyor belt with cheeses and subsequently to unload the filled or nearly filled conveyor belt at a palletizing device preferably disposed at the end of the machine. However, this method is disadvantageous in that it is necessary to make the drives of the transport device of relatively large size because of the not inconsiderable loading imposed by the supported cheeses, and the conveyor belt is stretched so greatly that additional positioning and control devices are required for detecting the respective exact positioning of the cheeses on the conveyor belt. This method furthermore leads to a reduction in the useful effects, since fresh cheeses can not be exchanged in the area of the winding stations during unloading.
Another clearing strategy immediately transports every finished cheese via the conveyor belt to the palletizing device into a bobbin reception position in which the cheese can be grasped by the palletizer. With this method, the transport device is stopped for loading and unloading every cheese, which in the end results in a "stop and go" operation and considerably stresses not only the transport device but also the delicate cheeses.
It is further known in connection with the transport of spinning pots to employ installations with transport elements which are lifted for the pot transport operation and which subsequently move the spinning pots to initiate transport by a longitudinal displacement, such as described in German Patent Publications DE 40 31 511 A1 and DE 43 05 916 A1.
Another transport device for textile packages is disclosed in German Patent Publication DE 44 28 247 A1, utilizing two parallel elongated thrust elements with interspersed ratchet dogs. In this apparatus, the thrust elements are seated and coupled by means of a coupling device such that a relative movement takes place between the thrust elements when one of the thrust elements is acted upon, and in turn results in the ratchet dogs being pivoted inwardly. The direction of pivoting outwardly of the ratchet dogs, and therefore the transport direction of the pot transport device, can be directionally set by means of appropriate blocking means acting on the coupling device. However, a continuous transport operation in which the spinning pots are stowed is not possible with the device described in German Patent Publication DE 44 28 247 A1.